SchNEWS is a free weekly information sheet produced
by media activists in Brighton. The newsletter comes out every Friday
almost without fail and is available to download from their website.
What we love about SchNews is their humour, and their piss taking
of the establishment....look out for the 'crap arrest' of the week
section. If you don't have much time to search out what is going
on in the UK and the world on the activist front, this is definitely
a great newsletter for you.

As well as the weekly newsletter, the website is an amazing resource
with a large "yellow pages" of contacts and listings.
We have planned many a summer around their 'Party and Protest' calendar
of dates! Also includes loads of cool 'How To' guides on such things
as housing co-ops, billboard subvertising and other direct action
activities. Our favourite and highly recommended!

"Definitely one of the best party and protest
sites to come out of the UK. Updated weekly, brilliantly written,
bleakly humourous, and essential reading for anyone who gives a
shit. And we all should."

followed by:

"Yes, it's the second entry for Schnews, cos
I got worried it was too far down the list. Updated every Friday!
Bookmark it!"

From
the Big Issue - Northern Edition

George Monbiot. 3rd December 2004

When most of the media is controlled by people (the rich and powerful)
who have an active interest in ensuring that the misdeeds of the
rich and powerful are not exposed, the alternative media become
critical to the survival of democracy. Rational political choices
 who to vote for, which policies to support, which to oppose
 are impossible if you dont understand the implications,
and the very information you need most is the information you are
least likely to obtain. Unless, that is, you are lucky enough to
have discovered Undercurrents and Schnews. There are plenty of alternative
media in Europe, but Ive yet to come across any which are
as informative and entertaining as these. If ever I forget why Im
an activist, Undercurrents and Schnews are there to remind me. Both
of them are ten years old this year.

Undercurrents is a video and DVD newsreel, and an antidote to everything
thats wrong with mainstream television news. It treats the
rich and powerful as objects of ridicule rather than objects of
reverence. Its mission is to hold them to account, to expose the
injustices they cause and to encourage people to knock them off
their perches. This is where it really excels: inspiring hope in
situations which at first sight look hopeless. The latest tape contains
a remarkable film about a students strike at Harvard: the
most powerful university on earth. The students locked themselves
into the university offices in protest at the pay and conditions
Harvard was imposing on its janitors. They stayed there until the
university caved in. Theres extraordinary footage of the escape
from the Woomera detention camp in Australia, and coverage of the
successful campaign against an oil company investing in Burma. Theres
also some brilliant animation and a genuinely funny spoof of Bush
and Blairs foreign policy. Fahrenheit 911 and Supersize Me
look pretty tame when youve seen this stuff. Whenever Ive
seen a copy of Undercurrents, I feel my heads going to explode
with inspiration and new ideas.

Schnews is a weekly newspaper, published in both print and electronic
forms. It is funny and wise and well-written. I love its corny headlines,
and its ability to convey complex issues with clarity and concision.
I receive 300 emails a day, but when Schnews comes out on a Friday,
it is always the first one I open. It tackles the issues which should
be the stuff of daily conversation, but which the mainstream media
generally ignores, such as the governments refusal to hold
corporate killers to account, the scandalous private finance initiative,
the new laws restricting protest and civil liberties and the persecution
of gypsies and travellers. If our mainstream media had the same
commitment to exposing injustice as SchNEWS does, Bush and Blair
would have been be out on their arses by now. And it always has
news about successful protests, in Britain and the rest of the world.
The latest edition contains the best reporting of Ukraines
orange revolution Ive read so far. I think, at last, I understand
whats happening there.

Both of them are run on a shoestring  Undercurrents for example,
cant release another tape unless enough people buy the current
one. And yet they have more to say about the real state of the world
than any of our lavishly-funded papers and broadcasters.